Kosovo Serbs, NATO Brawl on U.N. Village Visit

`This is unacceptable. This is a threat that is actually influenced very much by Belgrade,` Ruecker said.

 Kosovo Serbs angry at Western support for the territory's independence scuffled with NATO security officers during a village meeting with the U.N. overseer and top NATO commander, media reported on Friday.

Kosovo's public broadcaster showed a fist-fight between residents of the Serb enclave of Gorazdevac and NATO soldiers, who have patrolled Kosovo since the United Nations took control of Serbia's Albanian-majority province in 1999.

U.N. chief administrator Joachim Ruecker said he would file a complaint to the United Nations, where mediators on Friday submitted a report on four months of failed negotiations to decide Kosovo's final status and end eight years of limbo.

"This is unacceptable. This is a threat that is actually influenced very much by Belgrade," Ruecker said. He left the village under police escort.

Kosovo Albanians, 90 percent of the population, say they will declare independence early in 2008, with the expected backing of the United States and almost all EU members.

Around 120,000 Serbs remain in what many Serbs regard as the cradle of their nation. The two communities live largely separate lives, watched over by 16,000 NATO peacekeepers.

NATO is concerned that Serbs in the north, where they form the majority, could try to break away from an independent Kosovo, potentially sparking Albanian retaliation against isolated Serb enclaves such as Gorazdevac in the west.

NATO bombed Serbia for 11 weeks in 1999 to drive Serb forces out of Kosovo and halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a two-year Serb counter-insurgency war. Tens of thousands of Serbs fled revenge attacks.